Week of October 3, 2001
How is it that adversity can defeat some people, and bring out the best in others? In the shadow of the recent terrorist attacks on the United States, many Americans have risen to new challenge with courage and grace. This show explores what lets some people not only "bounce back" from disaster, but even gain in strength through adversity. The show includes interviews with psychologist Dr. Al Siebert, author of The Survivor Personality; and Dr. Karen Reivich, Co-Director of the Penn Resiliency Project at the University of Pennsylvania. One of the world's best known neuro-biologists, Dr. Robert Sapolsky, discusses how stress harms us... and helps us. And storyteller Laura Simms shares an Arabic story that reveals how even in grief we are not alone. Plus, John Hockenberry contributes a moving, insightful commentary on volcanos, SCUD missiles, terrorism, and resiliency.
The show begins with an introductory essay by host Dr. Fred Goodwin. "There isn't a more compelling time to understand and appreciate resiliency than now, in the wake of the monstrous acts of September 11th" says Dr. Goodwin. As a physician and psychiatrist, he works to diagnose and treat illnesses. "The longer I work with individual patients, the more I appreciate that what most distinguishes one from the other - what sets each of them apart - are the unique strengths each person brings to their struggle with illness. Strengths that collectively comprise what we call resilience. "
Next Dr. Goodwin interviews Dr. Al Siebert, a psychologist and author of the book The Survivor Personality. For over fifteen years Dr. Siebert has researched the qualities that allow some people to "bounce back" from great hardship, and even become stronger in the face of adversity. Resilient people, says Dr. Siebert, are able to stay relaxed in the face of a challenge, and think up and put in action innovative solutions to the problems they face. "They stay relaxed, like someone with a black belt in martial arts doesn't go into a competition tense, tight, nervous, hyper-vigilant." Curiosity, a sense of humor, and a willingness to accept paradox are other hallmarks of the resilient person. One way to pick up survivor qualities, says Dr. Siebert "is to be around survivors. So you look for people who do have that inner self confidence, who bring stability to a crisis, who remain calm when there's an emergency, and you sort of pattern yourself after them."
To contact Dr. Al Siebert write to P.O. Box 505 Portland, OR 97207 or visit his web site, THRIVEnet.
Click here to order Dr. Siebert's book, The Survivor Personality.
Next, The Infinite Mind's Emily Fisher interviews Dr. Robert Sapolksy, author of A Primate's Memoir and Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers. Dr. Sapolsky is Professor of Neurology and Biology at Stanford University. "If resilience is the goal," Emily Fisher points out, "It seems like stress, for many of us, is the biggest obstacle." Dr. Sapolsky discusses how stress affects the body and mind, and what we can do about it. For most of the year, Dr. Sapolsky works at Stanford, where he heads a laboratory that pioneers research in how brain cells react to stress. He also spends several months a year in the African savannah, where he studies how baboons cope with stress. "They're two sides of the same coin," says Dr. Sapolksy. "If you study how bodies and brains react to stress, after awhile you wonder how anyone's able to do anything and why we all don't just dissolve into a puddle of stress." So he decided to study how primates cope with stress.
Like baboons, when peoples face an enormous amount of stress ("running away from a hungry predator, running away from a falling building" are examples Dr.Sapolsky gives) their bodies mobilize to put every nonessential function -- eating, digestion, reproduction, etc. -- temporarily on-hold. "Your body's doing everything it's supposed to do," says Dr. Sapolsky. Over time this reshuffling of somatic priorities takes a toll. Cells aren't getting repaired. Digestion is impaired. Sleep is disturbed. Dr. Sapolsky's work with mice in a laboratory even indicates that the chemicals associated with stress kill brain cells.
On the other hand, a low amount or short experience of stress can prepare the body to handle a future onlslaught. Dr. Sapolsky compares this to immunization against a disease, in which you vaccinate the body with a small amount of a disease that in larger amounts would be deadly. Priming the body to deal with the disease prepares it to fight it in the future. "This even works at the level of brain cells," points out Dr. Sapolsky. Subjecting brain cells to oxygen deprivation for a few hours makes them more likely to survive a stroke several days later, but "not because you've increased their self esteem or made them feel better about themselves," says Dr. Sapolsky. The temporary oxygen deprivation somehow primes the neurons to survive more of the same later. Dr. Sapolsky points out that recent stresses connected with the terrorist attacks on the United States could prepare us for even bigger stresses in the future. He also suggests that people not continue to subject themselves to the vicarious stresses of watching disturbing video imagery over and over again, and that they gather together in groups. In speaking about his work with the baboon troop, Dr. Sapolsky says a key factor in how stressed out a baboon gets is how many social contacts he has. Baboons who have more social contacts, and groom others or are groomed themselves, areless stressed than their more solitary counterparts. Among humans, being part of a supportive social network, for instance, a religious community, can help to provide this key sense of being heard and understood.
To contact Dr. Sapolsky write to Department of Biological Sciences Stanford University Stanford, CA 94305 or check out the web site for Stanford's Sapolsky Laboratory.
Click to order Dr. Sapolsky's books A Primate's Memoir or Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers.
After a short break, the show on resilience resumes with storyteller Laura Simms. Ms. Simms is directing a Storytelling for Survival Initiative called "the Gaindeah Project" and is the Vice-Chair of the organization Healing Story Alliance, a special interest group of the National Storytelling Network. In the days and weeks after the attacks on the United States, Ms. Simms has gathered stories from all over the world that allow children and adults to reflect on the themes this painful experience has shaken loose. She has published the collection of stories and will be distributing them over the coming weeks to every school in New York and New Jersey.
Coming to terms with death is a theme found in many stories all over the world, says Ms. Simms. Many of these stories reveal that while we may feel alone in our grief, we are not alon, for death is a universal and unstoppable fact. She shares with our listeners an Arabic story, versions of which are told all over the world. This version, 'The Gazelle,' comes from Saudi Arabia.
"There once was a hunter," she begins. The hunter lived with his wife and their son in a small village. Every day the child begged his father to be allowed to accompany him on a hunt. "He's too young!" said the hunter's wife, "And the hunt too dangerous!" One day the child's parents agreed that the boy could accompany his father on a hunt. Tracking a wild gazelle, the father told the boy to stand under a tree. "Don't move," he told the boy. "Stay here, under the tree. You'll be safe here." But in the tree was a snake, "who embraced the boy, and killed him." When the father came back to the tree, he saw his son's lifeless body, and tenderly wrapped him in his cloak.
When the hunter arrived at his home, his wife greeted him. She asked what he held in his cloak. "It is a gazelle,"he told her. "A very special, very young gazelle. It can be cooked and eaten, but it must only be cooked in the pots of a house that has never known death and mourning, in pots that have never been used to cook a funeral feast." The hunter asked his wife to go to their neighbors and find such a pot. So the hunter's wife went from door to door in the village. At each home, her neighbors told that they had no such pot. Every house in the village had known death. Then the hunter's wife ventured outside the village. "Thank God we are all well now," said a woman she visited. "But last year, there was a bad fever and my son, so young, died. We must accept what happened. Of course, we used the pots then to cook the funeral meal. I'm sorry, I cannot help you." When the wife returned to her home at the end of the day, she told her husband that she had not been able to find a pot like the one he had described. "Every house in the village has known death," she told him. "It was then," concludes the storyteller, "that the hunter unwrapped the cloak and showed her their son's lifeless form. 'Today, my beloved, it is our turn."
To reach Laura Simms, please contact her web site or you can write to her at The Laura Simms Studio 814 Broadway, New York, NY 10003. For more information about storytellers using stories for healing, visit the web site for the Healing Story Alliance.
In the show's final interview, Dr. Goodwin interviews Dr. Karen Reivich, Co-Director of the Penn Resiliency Project at the University of Pennsylvania. Dr. Reivich is writing a book about resiliency, and is also the co-author of The Optimistic Child. Can parents and educators teach children to be more resilient? Yes, says Dr. Reivich, who runs a project that does just that, targeting children at risk for depression. "We teach them… cognitive behavioral techniques that increases their optimism, increases their problem-solving skills, and, the research shows, decreases their risk for depression, even two years after the program," says Dr. Reivich. The project teaches children how to think about their thinking and more specifically how to think as accurately as possible how to think about their problems. "What we find is the most resilient kids are able to say "This is what caused the problem" and they're accurate in their assessment. And they're able to solve the problem. They're able to put into action solutions that enable them to solve problems and feel a sense of mastery," says Dr. Reivich. "We also see that they have skills to control their emotions. When they start to become overwhelmed by anxiety or anger they have a set of skills in place that they can use to calm themselves down." The project teaches children techniques for mastering their emotions so that they can think through a difficult situation. For instance, the project teaches relaxation techniques like deep-breathing and visualization. When the children are more relaxed they are better able to analyze and solve problems they're faced with.
To contact Dr. Karen Reivich check out the web site for the Penn Resiliency Project or write to her at University of Pennsylvania Department of Psychology 3815 Walnut Street Philadelphia, PA 19104-6196
Concluding the show, John Hockenberry comments on what he learned about resilience over the years. As a reporter for NPR, he had covered the eruption of Mt. Saint Helen's twenty years ago. Within weeks of the eruption, ferns and new growth began to push up past the ash. When he tried to remember the outlines of the volcano before it erupted, he could not fix the once familiar outline in his mind. Mr. Hockenberry compares that forgetfulness to the forgetting that was part of the months and years following an accident he suffered as a young man, which injured his spinal cord. No longer able to walk, he soon forgot what it had felt like to walk. "There were pictures of me before the accident," Mr. Hockenberry says, "but when I saw them I instinctively thought 'That's not me. I don't look like that.' It was me." This very forgetting is part of resilience, he says. You forget because the information is no longer useful. He also talks of his years covering the Middle East for NPR. Following the scud missile crisis in Israel, many secular Jews who had come to Israel over the years decided to emigrate. It was no surprise to see their sad faces and hear their sad voices as they left the airport. So many hopes, dashed. But what was a surprise was to see the throngs of arriving Hasidim, joyfully moving to Israel, secure that God would protect them. "One doesn't thank terrorists for destroying five thousand lives," says Mr. Hockenberry, "but some good can come of this... We are changing and that's a good thing."
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